5.  On 1 October 1992 the applicant, acting as sole trader, entered into a contract with the State-owned company SIME ECO (“the company”) under which he leased part of its real estate – a production facility and fittings (“the property”) – for ten years.
6.  The rental contract stipulated, inter alia, that if the company terminated the lease prematurely then it would compensate the lessee for any improvements to the property.
7.  On 11 October 1994 the applicant submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Industry to purchase the property under the preferential privatisation procedure for lessees of State-owned properties or parts thereof provided for in section 35(1)(2) of the Privatisation Act.
8.  In a letter of 26 April 1995 the Minister of Industry rejected the applicant's proposal. On an unspecified date the latter appealed against the decision.
9.  In a final judgment of 4 December 1996 the Supreme Court found in favour of the applicant, quashed the decision of the Minister of Industry as unlawful, and, finding that he fulfilled the statutory conditions to purchase the property under the preferential privatisation procedure, explicitly instructed the Minister of Industry to adopt the required decision in order to sell him the property under section 35(1)(2) of the Privatisation Act. In particular, the court stated as follows:
“Thus, it should be accepted, in view of the outlined considerations, that the refusal made by the Minister of Industry to allow the purchase of the disputed property under the procedure of section 35(1)(2) of the [Privatisation Act] is unlawful and must therefore be quashed and ... the file remitted to the [competent] body under section 3 of the [Privatisation Act] for the matter to be decided in conformity with instructions given by the court above, in particular for an order to be issued for the privatisation of the property under the procedure of section 35(1)(2) of the [Privatisation Act].”
10.  The Minister of Industry did not issue an order for the applicant to purchase the property under the procedure of section 35(1)(2) of the Privatisation Act.
11.  On 19 December 1995 the National Assembly adopted a programme for mass privatisation (the “privatisation programme”) which provided that ninety per cent of the company's shares would be privatised. On 24 September 1996 the Tender Commission promulgated a list of companies whose shares would be sold in the first tender of the said programme. It included the company.
12.  On an unspecified date, the privatisation of the majority stockholding of the company was performed, together with the property as an asset. It is unclear whether this took place before or after the Supreme Court's judgment of 4 December 1996.
13.  Thereafter, the company had three private shareholders and the State, which retained a ten per cent stockholding.
14.  In 1997 the applicant, in his capacity of sole trader, initiated a civil action against the company, the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Industry. He sought to have the privatisation contract of the company declared partially null and void, to the extent that it related to the property, on the basis of the Supreme Court's judgment of 4 December 1996 in his favour. In a final judgment of 21 August 2001 the Supreme Court of Cassation rejected the applicant's claim, as it found that no privatisation contract had been executed between the respondent parties in implementation of the results of the first tender of the privatisation programme, and therefore that there was no act whose validity could be challenged in the context of the initiated civil proceedings. In its reasoning the court inferred that the applicant should have challenged the authorities' decisions to include the company in the privatisation programme and the other administrative acts issued in that regard.
15.  In the meantime, in 1998 the applicant, in his capacity as sole trader, had also initiated an administrative action against the Ministry of Industry in which he sought to have declared partially null and void, to the extent that it related to the property, (1) the decision of the Minister of Industry to include the company in the privatisation programme and (2) the privatisation contract for the sale of the company. In a final decision of 5 October 2000 the extended panel of the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the applicant's claim and found that neither of the acts constituted administrative acts which could be challenged in the context of administrative proceedings.
16.  On 12 November 2001 the applicant sought the assistance of the Prime Minister and the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office to obtain enforcement of the Supreme Court's judgment of 4 December 1996. In a letter of 5 December 2001 the Ministry of Economy informed the applicant that it could not assist him, because by that time the State owned only 0.2 % of the share capital of the company and could not force the sale of the property to the applicant. Thus, the only way that he could obtain enforcement would be to seek to purchase the property directly from the company.
17.  On an unspecified date the applicant, in his capacity of sole trader, initiated proceedings against the company seeking to be compensated for the improvements he had made to the property.
18.  In a judgment of 5 April 2004 the Varna Regional Court found partly in favour of the applicant. It recognised that in 1992 he had made improvements to the property in the amount of 200,352 old Bulgarian levs (BGL, approximately 12,637 German marks at the time), and, in view of the redenomination of the local currency of 4 July 1999, awarded him the current day equivalent of 200.35 new Bulgarian levs (BGN, approximately 102 euros (EUR)).
19.  On appeal, the Supreme Court of Cassation upheld the judgment of the lower court in a final judgment of 28 March 2005.